Shh... it´s a secret!

A couple hours southwest of Rio we stumbled across paradise! (well not so much stumbled as knew of the secret - Anita visited here a few years ago) We'd originally booked 3 nights in Trindade, but the best part of 2 weeks later we struggled to tear ourselves away to continue our trip. It's a small town located on the coast where the rainforest meets the sea, waterfalls meet waves and there is more beach than bitumen.

Trindade is a sleepy little town relatively undiscovered by foreigners, although the number of pousadas, restaurants and beach bars inform you that it is well and truly on the domestic tourist map. Most of the time we were there, we were under the threat of rain and consequently the town was quiet and the beautiful beaches almost uninhabited.

Rain or not the tropical climate means that you can go about your business regardless, and we managed to swim in the natural sea pools, visit the beaches, waterfalls and walk without any problems. We also managed to sample the local cuisine (several times!)and visted the beach bars at night, which absolutely crank, thanks largely to Cachaca (a strong sugar cane spirit) being 5.50 reals (less than A$4) for a 'good quality' bottle from the supermarket, which is about enough to fly a light aircraft from Rio to Sao Paulo. We also managed to line up some Portuguese lessons with a local for a whopping 10 Reals an hour (about A$6.50), which is helping greatly with our travels.

On the Friday before we left, the hostel owner managed to line up a day trip by boat to a couple of places where there are no roads, and all access is by foot or boat. With George as our guide we spent a few hours on a couple of the most beautiful deserted beaches you can imagine, hiked over a hill to a little waterfall to wash the salt off before finishing up in a little town called Ponto Negra (pop. ~150 people). Here we had lunch on the beach and played frisbee with the local kids while we waited for our boat to pick us up and take us back to Trindade.

Ponto Negra is spectacularly beautiful. The town is located in a sheltered cove with a small beautiful beach, a fresh water stream flowing down one side, and is completely surrounded by rainforest covered mountains. Although many locals do have motor boats, they still routinely use dug-out canoes for fishing. Everything in Ponto Negra is grown, caught, boated or hiked in....including the local French and English teacher who we met on the beach. You get the feeling of being in a Brazillian time capsule here... and hopefully when we make it back here down the track it'll still be virtually unchanged.

After farewelling our place in paradise, we've headed south towards Curitiba, and back on the coast again to a little island called Ilha do Mel - more on that in our next post...